where the love light gleams
by stolethekey
Summary: Clint points at her. "You were deprived of a proper American childhood. I am restoring that happiness to you." "First of all, I'm Russian, and second of all, I was deprived of a childhood, period." - or, natasha's first holidays at SHIELD


All things considered, the transition into SHIELD is going well.

Sure, she still occasionally wakes up in a panic, convinced she's being hunted by the people she once swore her life to. Sure, shadows on the street still make her flinch backwards sometimes, earning her confused glances from the people around her. And sure, sometimes she catches a glimpse of a building she once killed a target in and goes into a mini-spiral.

But all that is nothing compared to what her life was before, and despite her ever-present pessimism, Natasha can't help but feel like things are looking up.

It doesn't even bother her that the vast majority of the people at SHIELD still don't trust her. If she's honest, she really can't blame them – and besides, she's had plenty worse than the glares and suspicious glances people toss her way as she walks toward the briefing room.

Plus, there's one person who _never_ looks at her like that, and that's all she needs.

"Ever been to California?" Clint asks as she settles into the chair across from him. She hasn't.

Twenty minutes later, they're on a quinjet bound for Sacramento – or, as the large font on the city website proclaims, the place to "Discover Gold!"

Clint grins at her from his seat. "Your Russian ass is going to _love_ the California winter."

"It's barely winter," Natasha points out. "It's the first week of December."

"You wouldn't know it, though. It'll be warm enough for us to explore the city in barely two layers."

She stares at him. "We're not here to explore the city. We're here to – "

"Prevent a world-famous human rights activist from being murdered by a violent group that has painted her as their target while she's here to meet with legislators. Yes, I know. I'm the one who briefed you, remember? But she doesn't land until Thursday. Which means tomorrow, we're exploring."

Natasha, who had been planning to spend the day memorizing and re-memorizing blueprints and itineraries, makes a face. "Is that the best idea?"

Clint points at her. "You were deprived of a proper American childhood. I am restoring that happiness to you."

"First of all, I'm Russian, and second of all, I was deprived of a childhood, period."

"This is no place for your negativity," he says loftily. "You will not bring down the vibe of this trip."

"The _vibe?! _"

"Tomorrow, you are experiencing the wonders of the California state capital for the first time."

"You didn't even grow up in California."

"I've already made us a reservation to pan for gold. No take-backs. Dress comfortably!"

And that's how she ends up standing in front of a small, bubbling creek in the middle of an admittedly nice forest grove with a shallow bowl full of gravel in her hands. She grinds her heel into the bottom of her combat boot, forces herself to smile at their guide, and tries not to think about the blueprints folded into the bottom of her backpack.

She already has them memorized, of course. But she would've liked spending today making sure that she _really_ had them memorized.

The guide gives her a wide, friendly smile before launching into instructions, and Natasha digs an elbow into Clint's side.

"She's too friendly," she hisses.

"Shut up and do what she says," he whispers back.

With a long, resigned sigh, Natasha lowers herself onto the ground and submerges her pan in the water. She sticks her hands into the pan's contents, making a face at Clint as she does.

"You know they plant gold in the stream so that everyone gets some, right?"

"Stop being a buzzkill and knead your mud," he says, grinning broadly.

"I'm going to slit your throat," she mutters, but she lowers her head and starts to work at the material anyway.

When she's left with a clump-less pan, she starts to shake the pan in gentle but firm circles, looking up every so often to emulate their too-friendly guide. The motion is strangely calming, and after a few minutes, she lets herself slip into a rare moment of peace, watching the water gradually sweep away bits of dirt and gravel.

The amount of gratification she feels when she sees a few gold flakes at the bottom of her pan is almost embarrassing.

Natasha picks one out of the pan, rolling it between her fingers, and glances up to find that Clint is already looking at her.

"Look at that," he says, a boyish smile toying at the corners of his lips. "You got one."

She grins. "First try, too. Looks like I'm a natural."

He smirks, a familiar spark in his eyes. "One hour. Most gold wins."

"You're on."

She never loses focus, even as the pile of gold next to her gets slowly bigger, and sometime after the fifth pan it occurs to her that she feels _safe_ – safe enough to dedicate her attention solely to the ostensibly trivial task at hand, safe enough to trust that there is not someone watching her every move, waiting to flog her for wasting her time and daring to do something as frivolous as having fun.

The feeling is as foreign as it is exhilarating.

Natasha wins, by a whole 1.5 grams, which Clint concedes after three re-weighs with a good-natured shrug that doesn't quite match the frustration in his eyes.

"I'll beat you at the next one," he grumbles as they stroll back into the parking lots, their spoils tucked safely away in two Ziplock bags.

"We're getting lunch next," Natasha points out, and Clint sniffs.

"At the next competition."

"You don't even know what that is."

"Doesn't matter."

Lunch is a quick stop at a Mexican restaurant on their way to an escape room, which they bust out of in under twenty minutes.

"We've never had anyone solve it that fast, let alone two people," says the nice lady that works there.

"I used to work for the KGB," says Natasha.

The lady takes a step back, and Clint smirks as they thank her and head out the door.

The rest of the day is spent in Old Sac, which is decked to the nines with Christmas lights and sees their hands full of candy and shopping bags that steadily increase in number. There are tours of the underground tunnels and pictures in front of the Christmas tree and a train museum. Clint drags Natasha into ten gaudy souvenir shops, which are perfect for anyone who would want to brag about having been to the incredibly famous tourist attraction that is Sacramento.

Natasha's personal favorite is a vintage costume shop that doubles as a prank store. She buys a red headpiece that she thinks she might be able to use on a mission someday. Clint buys a pack of fake worms.

They head back to the hotel after dinner, which includes soup dumplings that rival the ones Natasha once had on a trip to Shanghai. She spots a karaoke place on the walk back and thanks Clint for not dragging her into it.

He shrugs. "Trust me, I thought about it. Just didn't think you'd be comfortable with it yet."

"I wouldn't be. That's what I'm saying – thanks."

A sly grin starts to form on his face. "Oh, don't thank me yet. I'm playing the long game here. Baby steps. We'll get there eventually."

Natasha believes him.

As it turns out, their day of fun does not, in fact, make Natasha forget the blueprints. Clint settles on top of the roof, she navigates the Capitol building with the ease of a long-time employee, and as the rest of the SHIELD agents take their spots she wonders if there is still some blue taffy left at the bottom of her bag.

Her thoughts are cut short by someone shouting frantically into her earpiece that there's been movement on the east side of the building, and as she follows everyone down the halls something twitches uncomfortably in her gut.

It isn't until she's sprinted past the Governor's office that she remembers – a small line of the itinerary, marked with asterisks for "UNKNOWN TO PUBLIC".

"Wait!" she gasps, skidding to a stop and turning to the officer nearest her. "It's a red herring. She's not on this side of the building, remember? The public itinerary said she was, but they must've figured it out, they're trying to draw us out – "

The officer just shoots her a distrustful glare and keeps running, and for the first time, it bothers her.

Natasha spins around, skirts past the gigantic Christmas tree, and sprints the other way, ignoring the mutters and stares from her colleagues as she does. She bursts into a stairway and takes the stairs three at a time, flying through the door to the fourth floor and down the hallway. The nameplates on office doors are merely blurs that go unread; she has the entire floorplan memorized, after all, and she knows exactly what office she's looking for.

She turns the corner and sees him – a skinny, nervous-looking guy who looks barely out of high school with one hand on the doorknob and the other on the gun in his holster. Natasha feels a pang of sympathy as she takes a step toward him.

"Oh, buddy," she says quietly. "They made _you_ do this one? What is this, some kind of sick hazing ritual?"

He looks up, face blanching, and fumbles for the gun, pointing it at Natasha. His hand is shaking so much Natasha is pretty sure that, if he tried to shoot, he'd miss her completely.

"Please put that down," she says gently, leaning calmly against the wall. "I don't want to hurt you. I know what you're going through – "

The kid's eyes flash, his finger tightening on the trigger, and Natasha pushes herself off the wall with an exasperated sigh. She tackles him as the bullet embeds itself harmlessly into the wall behind her, barking her location into the intercom.

Thirty seconds later, the rest of the crew thunders around the corner to find Natasha hovering over a teenage kid whose hands have been tied with shoelaces, his gun dangling harmlessly from her finger.

"He's agreed to give us names and locations in return for immunity," she announces.

Clint gives her the widest grin she's ever seen. Everyone else looks equal parts shocked and incredulous.

Things get cleaned up quickly, after that – the kid gets handed over to the cops, but only after she tells them about the deal and forces them to promise to a rehabilitative effort. She glowers at them and tells them she will personally come oversee his case. They stammer and promise to work something out with the DA.

Less than an hour later, she's back on the quinjet. She's staring out the window at the Capitol building, all lit up in red and green and fading into the distance, when Clint sits next to her.

"I'm really glad you came," he says, giving her a small smile.

Natasha doesn't know whether he means the assignment, or their little tourist excursion, or SHIELD itself. She doesn't think it matters.

"Me, too." 

Everyone is nicer to her after Sacramento.

Word about her single-handedly saving their activist – and therefore SHIELD's ass – spreads quickly. People stop glaring at her in hallways, and the murmurs that follow her around are filled not with suspicion but with awe. The intern that drops off her invitation to the SHIELD holiday party does so with a wave and a shy smile, and Natasha almost laughs.

She fully intends to toss the invitation and skip the gala until Clint shows up in the doorway, brandishing an AMEX black card, and drags her to the nearest shopping mall.

"This is your first Christmas in the States," he says, pushing her into a Nordstrom. "We're going all out, courtesy of SHIELD."

Natasha shows up to the party in a maroon jumpsuit and white boots, and as she casts around for a familiar face she spots the invitation intern sipping a glass of champagne in the corner.

"Hey," she says lightly. "Mark, right?"

Mark looks up with a deer-in-the-headlights look that she finds almost endearing. "Um, yes, Ms. – um, Agent Romanoff."

She gives him a kind smile that he clearly does not know what to do with and asks, "Do you know where Barton is?"

"Oh," Mark says, clearly relieved that it's a question he can answer. "He's about to announce the Christmas waltz, I think."

"The Christmas waltz," she repeats, just as the lights go off and a spotlight beams onto the stage.

He appears out of nowhere, dressed in a suit she's pretty sure is straight out of an old Hollywood movie, and she would laugh at the way his hair is slicked back but her mind seizes on the way the suit frames his body and something turns over in her stomach and – _oh_ –

Natasha swallows, the words "find a partner" landing somewhere outside her ears, and he disappears off the stage before her mind has stopped reeling.

"Hey, Mark," she says, turning back toward the intern with a forced smile, "Want another drink? I'm going to the bar anyway."

Mark blinks. "Oh. Um, I'd take another glass of champagne?"

"Sure thing."

She turns back around and runs straight into a gallon of hair gel, attached to a shy smile.

"Hi," Clint says, and his eyes linger only for a moment. "You look great."

"You saw me in this when we bought it."

"Yeah, but it wasn't – " He coughs. "Never mind."

According to the clink of glass and hurried footsteps behind her, Mark skitters away from the corner about as surreptitiously as an army of tanks thundering over a mountain. Clint snorts, she cracks a smile, and something about it gives her a sudden surge of courage.

"Wanna dance?" she asks, before she can change her mind.

"Oh," Clint says, and he doesn't look overjoyed, exactly, but he doesn't look like he wants to run away screaming either. "I – um, I don't actually know how."

"That's okay," she says with a smile, taking his hand and pulling him onto the dance floor. "I'll teach you if you tell me how many stores you had to ransack for that much hair gel."

Clint huffs a short laugh that ends much too quickly. He puts a hesitant hand on her waist as hers finds his shoulder, and the music starts as their other hands find their ways to each other.

"I have to ask," he begins, trying his best to match Natasha's steps. "How many times have you gone undercover at a dance to kill someone?"

She rolls her eyes, pulling her right foot back before he can step on it. "You can't ask me that. It's Christmas."

"Technically, Christmas is two days away."

Natasha smirks, launching herself into a twirl that he catches onto fairly quickly. "When have I _ever_ gotten hung up on technicalities?"

He laughs, bringing her back in, and suddenly she's so close she can see the faint green stripes in the dark blue of his tie, can smell the faint scent of the cologne she'd spotted in his desk drawer the week before.

"You're right," he says, his voice right next to her ear and suddenly ten times louder. "My mistake."

She gives a small shake of her head and looks desperately over his shoulder, searching for a more innocent topic than whether Christmas is a day or a state of mind that will _not_ lead to joking and laughing and flirting while the fabric of his shirt is so close to her face she can practically feel it against her cheek.

"Who are all these people? I mean, I know I'm new, but I feel like I've never seen like half the people here."

"Oh, people bring their families," Clint says matter-of-factly, and Natasha pulls back to look at him. "It's mostly their spouses, but some of them who have older kids bring them too. Anyone over 21 is fair game."

Her brow furrows. "People are allowed to have families?"

"Yeah, why – " Clint's eyes widen, realization dawning slowly across his face. "Oh. _Oh._"

He's looking at her in a way that is half pitying, half sad, and suddenly she hates herself for pivoting so brashly away from the technicalities of the holidays.

"Never mind," she mutters. "Just didn't know."

"Natasha – "

"Can we go back to arguing about Christmas?"

He stays silent for what feels like an eternity, and how _long _is this song, anyway?The gods (or the DJ, or whatever) do not take pity on her.

"Come over," he says finally. "On Christmas."

"Why, Clint Barton," she almost sings, trying valiantly to re-lighten the mood, "At least take me out to dinner first."

He rolls his eyes but doesn't smile. She sighs and drops the façade. "Okay, fine. Why?"

Clint shrugs. "Don't wanna be alone."

"_You_ don't want to be alone, or you don't want _me_ to be alone?"

He gives her a small grin, a ghost of the old sparkle back in his eyes. "Both."

"Hrumph," she huffs, and his grin widens. "I'll think about it."

She shows up at nine o'clock sharp Christmas morning, clad in pajama pants (per Clint's instructions) with a bottle of wine and a five-pack of hair gel in her hands. Clint opens the door with a sleepy smile and rumpled, product-free hair that she definitely does _not_ stare at or think about running her hands through.

What she does stare at is the absolute mountain of presents underneath his tree.

"Are you introducing me to a family of four you've been hiding in your apartment?"

He chuckles, taking a seat on the couch and tucking his feet underneath him. "No, those are for you."

She stares at him, unable to tell if he's kidding.

He's not.

"You've never had a proper Christmas," he explains. "Which means you've never gotten a cliché, unpersonal gift from someone who occupies that weird territory between an acquaintance and a friend. But cliché gifts are the most quintessential part of Christmas, so I figured the best way to bring you up to speed was to get you all of them."

"Well, now I feel stupid about that hair gel," she says, reaching for the top box.

It's a gift set of lotion, body wash, and hand soap that, according to the label, smell like something called _Winter Candy Apple_.

"What's the difference between a winter candy apple and regular candy apple?"

"The Christmas spirit."

The second box includes five pairs of socks. The third is a box of chocolates. The fourth is filled to the brim with differently scented candles. Natasha thinks they will last her five years. A smaller one reveals three different gift cards to stores she has never been to in her life.

This continues, box after box, until she has successfully rendered the carpet around her a mirror image of a Walmart Christmas section. She shoves the final piece of wrapping paper into the trash bag she'd asked for after the chocolates and looks up at Clint, her instinctual sarcastic comment dying in her throat as she meets his eyes.

He's sprawled across the couch, a lazy smile on his face as he takes in the gifts around her. She looks around her, at all the chocolates and trinkets and dumb things she's sure he spent a good amount of money and effort on, and she _knows_ that it's impossible. She knows that no matter how many times they sit in the same living room in snowflake pajamas and open presents, it will always be an illusion. She _knows_ that this domestic _thing, _this dream,whatever it is,will never be a reality. Not for her.

But for a moment, she's tempted to see how close she can get.

"Thank you," she says softly. "This is – I owe you."

Clint studies her for a moment, and then grins. "Take me out to dinner for New Year's, then, and we'll call it even."

"Deal."

The universe, it seems, does not approve of this agreement.

The two of them get sent on a stakeout the day after Christmas, and despite their prayers that their arms dealer shows up before the end of the year, December 31st sees them stuck in their hotel room with no end in sight.

"Well," Clint says, watching the clock hit 11:59, "At least I'm not here alone. Feel like I'd go crazy."

Natasha snorts as she leans back into her pillow. "Yeah. I feel like you would, too."

Clint makes an indignant noise, but an explosion sounds outside their window before he has a chance to retort.

Both of them shoot off their beds and to the window, pulling back the blinds in time to see the a few gold sparks fall out of the sky.

More fireworks go off, and the crowd that has gathered underneath their window starts counting down from 30. Natasha watches the color burst through the sky, illuminating the city below in bright reds and yellows, and a strange sense of belonging settles into her gut.

"Hey," she says, turning toward her companion. "You never told me if there were any New Year's traditions I missed out on."

Panic flashes briefly across his face, replaced quickly with a careful mask of indifference. "Oh," Clint says, his tone deliberately light, "There isn't much. People just get together to count down and watch the ball drop, or the fireworks, or whatever. No big deal."

"You're a bad liar," Natasha says, and the crowd below them hits 21, then 20. "Come on, what is it?"

Clint gives a shaky laugh as he stares determinedly out the window, refusing to meet her gaze. "We – uh, we can't do it. Today. So – um, I just – "

She wants to rib him for being so embarrassed about whatever it is, but he's visibly uncomfortable enough that she decides to let it go.

"Alright," she says, turning back towards the fireworks. "Suit yourself."

The countdown hits 10, and the chants sound significantly more excited as they head into single digits.

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha sees Clint glance at her, ever so briefly.

"Maybe next year," he says, his voice so low she almost misses it.

She turns to look at him as a chorus of loud cheers sounds below their building, and a barrage of fireworks explodes outside their window in a spectacular grand finale. The room around them shifts colors with the sky outside, casting Clint's features in blue and green, then reds and bright, bright gold.

They are not promised time, she knows. It is impossible to predict what the next year will bring, whether they'll see the end of it at all. In lives like theirs, time is a luxury few are afforded, which means promises are meaningless and seldom kept.

But she's using the time that she has to do something worthwhile, now. She's taken a life out of her control and returned it fully to her grasp, and that isn't nothing.

It's also all thanks to the man standing next to her.

"Yeah," she says softly. "Next year."

She thinks she might even mean it.


End file.
